dreams of a freedom beyond reach
by Grand Phoenix
Summary: So many questions, yet no answers. Not even the silence knows. [Alleria, in Boralus][BfA era, set right before Rise of Azshara]


It's cold outside tonight—cold enough to turn off the fans the gnomes brought aboard below decks, pull on a jacket and close the windows to ward off the chill coming west over Drustvar.

That doesn't stop Alleria from climbing up the mast and sprawling out on the spar just below the crow's nest. The air is worse this high up, and more than once she's heard Shaw, Wyrmbane, and even Taelia try to call her down, she's apt to roll off and either hit the water or the ground and break her neck. She is not, as Taelia put it very bluntly, a __cat__, even if she acts as such and could probably land on all fours in the event she did fall. What would she say to the Lord-Admiral, if something happened to her? Umbric is second-in-command, but he's not as agile as her; he would have to be recalled from Zuldazar and stew away on deck, going through battle reports and the comings and goings of trade and supplies, and Taelia was absolutely certain, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Umbric would hate doing that because his leader accidentally lost her balance off a boat and plunged to her death.

Alleria thinks Umbric would rather prefer the arctic comfort of the Sound over the sweltering hellhole that are Zandalar's jungles, or the rolling deserts of Vol'dun. In fact, he'd probably consider it a blessing that he could finally get off his feet and bend his back over the latest Zandalari artifact they uncovered for the Alliance to tap into and use on the Horde. Better they die as themselves than as a slave to their own impulses, like Grong did. Not that that mattered to SI:7; their king was dead, their raptors defiled, and their people butchered, but if that meant one less Horde soldier to contend with then by all means, Shaw surmised, let them find false comfort in Sylvanas's arms.

She sighs, blowing a breath that kicks her hair up and gets into her eyes that she has to push aside with a brush of her hand. __Beaten__ and __broken__ are words that aren't found in the Horde's lexicon, for no sooner did Talanji swear fealty to the Warchief did word come in through the networks that Sylvanas is preparing to send her ships out to sea, toward the east. Where exactly east is beyond anyone's guess...but she had that foul blade in her possession, given to her by a Horde soldier that has close ties to the Warchief (although these reports had yet to be confirmed as authentic, it was all rampant, tinfoil speculation), and King Anduin expressed concerns that meddling with such powers with so little care would only lead to further desecration of the world and the natural balance she was upending in her petty war. Jaina and Genn were currently making preparations that would see the bulk of Kul Tiras's navy after her, and soon.

(She considered volunteering to accompany them on the voyage. Yet more and more blood elves were defecting from the Horde and finding their way to relative safety on the border between Redridge and the Burning Steppes without getting gutted on the spot by SI:7, and Wyrmbane had yet to call upon her specifically for her services again after the fiasco with Gallywix—an embarrassment for a vaunted Alliance hero to experience after being away so long, though he and Shaw insisted it wasn't her fault things turned out the way they did. If Sylvanas is going to be brought to justice, Alleria intended to stay alive for as long as the war raged until that fated day happen. No one, not the King, not even Genn Greymane who stayed her hand at Brill, would be able to stop her from doing what they could not, what they wasted so much time and lives on, rank be damned.

But not today.)

In spite of the fog rolling in and the slight mist in the air, the sky is clear and full of bright stars. There's a sliver of the White Lady at the height of the world, the Blue Child hiding in its shadow. A gull issues a lusty cry, punctuated by the city bell tolling the coming of the new hour.

Alleria can just make out the long, jagged outline of Sargeras's blade on the horizon, slightly blacker than the shadows that surround her. And hanging low, just above the hilt, is a small, red light. Another planet, one with an untrained eye (and a blissful lack of the knowledge that Azeroth is well and truly the last Titan) would say, making a rare once-in-a-while flyby in the Great Dark.

Not for the first time, she can't help but wonder if anyone else has noticed how much brighter it's gotten. Closer, too; it doesn't fit in the palm of her hand anymore, when she would raise it and hold it aloft to hold and cradle.

__Just a trick of the light,__ she thinks, but Alleria holds her arm up nonetheless. Spreads all five fingers out toward the Seat of the Pantheon, encompassing it within her reach.

__What could they be doing now?__

What a strange question. It isn't the kind one is apt to ask after nearly averting the end of the world as Azeroth knew it. Just about everyone buried their dead, paid their dues, celebrated, watched their children be born in the wake of the Iron Horde's dissolution, and went on with their lives; and they still did, even after everything that happened after azerite was discovered. The motions were repeated, are repeated, and continue to repeat, and will repeat.

There was no time, if at all, to reflect on what fresh hell Illidan is inflicting on Sargeras.

__Do the Illidari think about him?__

What a silly question. Of course they think about him: he had given them the eternal task of protecting Azeroth with all their demonic hearts and souls. But now there is a war on the homefront. The world is afire with the blood of innocents and the rage of the grieving and the faithful unstoppable. There are monsters lurking in daylight as much as demons hunted through the unrelenting darkness of the cosmos.

All that effort to ensure the planet's enduring safety, the lives of their families, washed away in a tide of fire.

__Are they divided?__

What a preposterous question. Of course they are. There were—there __are__ more night elf demon hunters pledging their services to the Alliance than any blood elf that would set foot off the __Fel Hammer__ and take up arms in the name of the Horde. They had suffered once before, years ago. They are not on the verge of extinction, grappling with the dilemma of continuing their bloodlines through what remained of their purebred slim pickings or swallow their pride and court themselves to the high elves and (Elune forbid!) humans. They still had a place to call home.

Kaldorei are vicious creatures. Alleria had been told, time and time again, as if it were a mantra of absolute truth, that they were __declawed__, __without fangs__. That with the constant suffering they had to put up with from their enemies over ten thousand years following the War of the Ancients they had become __gutless__, __pacified__, spurned to atone for their xenophobic misgivings and cruelty by turning to druidism and doubling down on their Elunite teachings.

They were wrong. Those that believed such sentiments didn't know what it was like when push came to shove. They could not imagine being capable of the level of violence that was reported to be happening in Darkshore.

__But surely there are some that refuse to take part in the war? Surely they're helping Magni heal the wounds in the world?__

What an obvious question. Of course they're helping him. It's not only the task Illidan presented them with as the Armies of Legionfall and the Army of Light made that agonizing push into Antorus, it is common sense to see Azeroth restored to her glory, even as he looked upon that hellish landscape and knew, deep within his heart, he would not return. He is a demon hunter, removed of his kin. There is no greater place in all the universe than up there, in the stars, surrounded by the judging silence of the Titan Pantheon in their high, gilded seats, repaying Sargeras for all the chaos, blood, and tears he had caused for countless millennia.

Alleria breathes, gentle and slow. She turns her hand sideways, fingers outstretched as if to frame the star.

__Is he alright?__

What a curious question. He should be alright. Otherwise, that star wouldn't be in the sky. It may be closer, and brighter, than before, but proximity and radiance are a better alternative than watching all the lights blink out and the Seat of the Pantheon come crashing down, wiping all life out on Azeroth (a scenario she often thinks about when gazing upon the pieces of suspended rifts past the growing Voidstorm, and a nightmare that often sneaks upon her, when she least expects it, as she sleeps, and the mere whisper of that thought elicits a coil of dread in her gut).

All his life, his only goal is to pursue the hunter. Become one with the hunt.

All those millennia, spent underground in a tiny cell, plotting, thinking, reflecting in silence. Unable to waste away, for the Wardens would not let him. Put there by Malfurion, for he thought his brother lost without any hope of redemption and a traitor to all that was right and good for not only the kaldorei but for Azeroth and her natural balance.

(What a terrible fate, to leave one's kin alive when justice had not been met. It would have been better for Malfurion, perhaps all kaldorei, to have put Illidan down then and there. But granting Illidan death would have ensured Azeroth's demise, and no one, not even his burgeoning Illidari, were nowhere near as mad and patient as their Lord and Master. All the beauty and wonder of magic would be forever lost in a wave of fire...but so would their forests and their rivers and their flowers and all their dreams of tasting paradise. Sargeras was mad, but he would have his victory, the peace of utter silence in the middle of nowhere...but not for very long. For without Light there can be no Shadow, and Darkness without Light is persistent, all-consuming, a beast with no moral conscience or mercy. Not even death would spare him from that knowledge.)

All that time, once he was freed, continuing the hunt he had started so long ago; into the tomb that had once been an abode for Elune, across the stars into the world of the draenei ruined and shattered by the Dark Titan's touch, into the Burning Throne where his rule was absolute and creation was a bastard child of entropy and rebirth; and when the hunt was ended, the punishment for all those crimes against humanity in an act of total, universal purification free of malevolence is an eternity of torture—death unending, with nary a single shred of kindness for rest. Peace from self-agony.

(But what price is there to be paid for those that fight for peace with such extreme methods of opposing value? Is peace truly so deserving for those that have marched through hell and stepped on the corpses as they make their way to that final destination, rising above the confluence of the animal within and the person without?)

__Was it worth it?__

What a simple question.

And what a simple answer, descending upon Alleria like a guillotine.

"You never had a life. Did you, Illidan?"

She moves her hand again, palm facing the Seat of the Pantheon. Reaching for it, unable to grasp it.

__What would he do__ __if he knew what happened in Teldrassil? What Malfurion and Tyrande are doing? Would he join the Alliance and avenge the night elves? Or would he simply go straight for Sylvanas, and end the war before it started?__

She frowns.

No.

No. He would not help them. He had renounced his people and parted ways from his brother and his paramour. They are adults. They need not cling to each other anymore. Nay, not with the ill will fostered between them once the War was ended and his judgment came to pass.

They are on their own now, defending Azeroth from the Horde. From Sylvanas.

A breeze riffles through her hair, cool and briny.

__Would I let him do it, if he were here? Could he do what I failed to stop?__

"What would you do?" she asks aloud, voice raspy soft.

(It doesn't bother her anymore, when she asks herself—asks Illidan—what he would do in a war against a governmental body that helped him pave the way to Argus. Strange, really, for her to being do so; she had heard the stories in her youth of the Betrayer, the Legion's greatest warrior, a man scorned by love and twisted by lust for power, but she did not know him then; the world believed him dead. She did not know him as Turalyon and the Army of the Light knew of him, chosen by Xe'ra as the Child of Light and Shadow as prophecy dictated, but she did not know him as such; he was a legend, a hero, he would have them know only paradise.

When Xe'ra's Light wrapped him in the loving embrace that would soothe the pain in his scars and the stain of fel on his soul, Alleria knew then. When Illidan broke from his bondage and shattered her into pieces all over the __Vindicaar__ and stopped the blow that would have seen his head removed and Turalyon the avatar of justice served, that was when she knew.

Illidan Stormrage had the answers. He had seen what Sargeras had seen and drove to such heights of insanity. He knew what had to be done. Perhaps he was even aware, when he refused to return to Azeroth.

Often she wondered—in the middle of the night in the house they had once shared in Stormwind, and then later upon the edges of the Telogrus Rift, aboard the __Wind's Redemption__, and strolling through the perpetually dampened boroughs of Boralus—why her thoughts turned to Illidan for help but not the man who won her heart with that innocent kindness and saved her from a vengeful crusade that would have killed her and deprived Arator of a mother that even now he barely knows. The same man, Alleria will remind herself, that vouched for her even as Xe'ra attempted to sway her from 'succumbing to the Void's temptations' and, when that had failed, imprisoned her.

Then she remembered the hopeful gleam in Turalyon's eyes as he presented Illidan to the Light Mother, said word for word that their Chosen One had returned at long last and all would be as foretold in the prophecy. How much more youthful it made him appear, as though the scars upon his face and the crow's feet and lack of sleep were washed away in entropy.

And then she would remember how fast it all crumbled, the shock and disbelief that replaced the man that is called High Exarch Turalyon with a lost little boy named Turalyon of Lordaeron. Illidan __refused__—Illidan Stormrage, the Child of Light and Shadow. Illidan, their savior! He had pushed himself away from Xe'ra's love and repaid her kindness with __violence__ and __death__. Then the boy that was Turalyon became the man that is High Exarch Turalyon. He had drawn Lothar's sword, half the blade pure, solid Light, and charged at Illidan, renounced him as Savior and declared him Betrayer. No longer was he the Light's Chosen. He was now become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.

Alleria was taken aback. She would never have guessed Illidan possessed that much power. Demons she could understand, for nearly every one they had encountered had sworn themselves to Sargeras and his Burning Crusade. But a prime naaru? A cornerstone for all creation?

She helped pick Illidan off the floor afterwards and offered to bandage the wound in his hand. He declined; the fel would restore it in short order. The hunt was still ongoing, and he turned to go.

He did not leave. Instead he turned back around, facing her. Alleria looked back, but he did not say anything for a while, and the longer the silence drew the more curious and uncomfortable she became.

"Illidan?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"You didn't defend him," Illidan said.

"Turalyon?"

"He is yours, yes? You have been fighting with him for a thousand years. You have seen what he has seen." Illidan frowned. "You have seen what the Light has seen."

"I've seen too much," Alleria said. "I've seen more to last a lifetime."

"Why did you not stop the Prophet and go to the High Exarch in his stead? It is your duty—"

"It wasn't duty," Alleria said, interrupting him, and for a moment she expected him to lash out for her impudence.

Illidan did not. He stared at her, ears pricked up. "No? Then what was it?"

"Common sense," she said, and waited for Illidan to venture further. Instead he waited, expression neutral. He gestured for her to continue. "It wasn't right. Seeing you handled like that, from someone that's supposed to the embodiment of what's meant to good and right, no less, made me remember what it felt like. To be judged and found wanting, with every eye in the room on you as you're given your sentence. How could I stand there and fall in line after that?"

From empty sockets Illidan blinks, slow, thoughtful. The infernal fires set within them behind the blindfold dim, and then brighten. "I see," he said, quietly, drawing the words out. Almost carefully. Not uncertain, but tentative. "Did she…?"

"Try to lightforge me? No. She did to me what Malfurion did to you. But I think she would have, when the time was right." She swallowed thickly. "I think they all would have."

"Even the High Exarch?"

(The images had been on her mind, the moment she began to dabble in the Void, and long after Xe'ra passed down her judgment. They came back in full force, at quicksliver speed, as Illidan spoke those words; and in the middle of the night, alone in the dark of their abode they had shared Stormwind and as she sat upon the edges of the Telogrus Rift, stood upon the deck of the __Wind's Redemption__, and walked the perpetually dampened boroughs of Boralus, Alleria wonders: Would he have? Would he have dragged her from her cell, forced her onto her knees, and beseech the Light Mother for a baptism by fire? Would Turalyon be happy then?)

__No, he wouldn't. I've been with Turalyon for a thousand years. He would never do that to me. He loves me.__

__I love him.__

Alleria did not answer.

Illidan did not push her. He simply nodded and looked out the window, where the stars wheeled in slow, dreamy concentration. "Now you begin to see, young Alleria," he said, voice a rumbling cascade of water and avalanche. "You are beginning to understand. The Light is...sterile. Far-sighted, if you will. But the Void is just as hungry as Fel. Take caution. This power is yours to master. Do not let the others tell you how you should lead it.

"You are your own god. Let nothing stop you from what needs to be done.")

"So what do I do?" Alleria asks the stars. "Where do I go from here?"

She stretches her hand out as far as it goes until she feels the strain in her bones and the pull in her muscles. She imagines the light of the Seat winking at her, flaring briefly before dimming to its natural radiance, anticipates the words that will be directed into her mind and fill her with the satisfaction of finally being heard, of the man that had towered over her and everyone present aboard the __Vindicaar__, wings draped low, encased in his shadow—safe. Home.

The sky does not change. The star remains the same, caught between her fingertips.

The wind sighs.

"Illidan…."

* * *

**A/N:**

In _At Every Crossroad, A Menhir_, I mentioned that one of the biggest missed opportunities in _Legion_, minus the lack of lightforged!Illidan and Kael'thas getting brought back as a fully realized demon (although that topic gets touched on in an upcoming one-shot I have in my WIP folder for WoW fics), was Alleria and Illidan interacting. The Stormrage brothers and the Windrunner sisters (except Vereesa, to whom I attribute her to be the quel'dorei equivalent of Tyrande) are more alike than they appear to be, in my opinion, that parallel and play off of one another - although it's tough to say just how, exactly, Sylvanas fits into all of this, despite her leaning more toward being the Illidan of the Windrunners as much as Alleria does. However, I think these parallels need more exploration in the future, depending on how things turn out come BfA's end and what entails for the next expansion (at the time of this post, I have yet to finish the War Campaign).

To return to the present: it should come as no surprise to some that the star that is the Seat of the Pantheon that can be seen in the sky post-Antorus that it has, indeed, gotten closer and brighter, and that there are implications that something will occur should it go out. I think about that star now and again as I'm doing my own thing in the game, and I think about how much time could possibly be passing up there while the war wages on Azeroth and N'Zoth moves freely among the shadows. I still think about the what-ifs, like Yrel and her Lightbound, but mostly the Prophecy of the Child of Light and Shadow, and wonder if it was really Illidan Xe'ra spoke about or if she was right but was wrong in assuming it was Illidan when it was someone else (I will laugh if it turns out it's still in play and the Child turns out to be one of the Windrunners, such as Arator or Sylvanas). I suppose it doesn't really matter too much in the end, although I should like to be pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I get the feeling that Blizzard plays it too safe with the community, whenever there is backlash (which is...just about everything, now that I think about it); it feels almost restrictive, even when you disregard the fact that they have to play within the game's T rating and appeal to a more casual demographic to broaden their audience. It's really my only criticism of their narrative directions, but that's beside the point.

Again, as much as I like the idea of inserting Alleria/Illidan, I still can't bring myself to list it as a pairing; I'm not into the NTR game, and I don't see Alleria/Turalyon breaking off anytime soon. Although it _is_ nice to think about what Alleria could be doing in Boralus, seeing as she hasn't done much, and it's really only a matter of time before Illidan and Sargeras come back into the story again. I think it would an interesting dynamic to play with and expand on, especially if we see parallels between Illidan/Sargeras and Alleria/N'Zoth.


End file.
